Page 769 - Doom Neigh-er

Author Notes:

Man, it feels weird to set up a Saturday comic and not have to worry about adding link templates for when the campaign podcast goes up (or worrying about explaining why it's not coming, when applicable).

What comes next is rest, retrospection, and then planning out what the "next thing" is. Because I like having a game to share with all of you, so I don't want to keep you waiting. That said... I've been running a game for two and a half years. I'm taking a couple of weeks off, darnit.

My friends and I enjoy running Paizo published Pathfinder adventure paths ever since my brother introduced us to Rise of the Runelords. We've finished two of them in the last couple of years, so each lasted about a year, a little more.

Buuuuuut...

During the run of the second, we've worked elements of the first and discussed potential connections so our second story is "in continuity" with the first. Not to mention we've been playing a custom-made Spell Jammer campaign that incoporates our old Rise of the Runelords characters and I recently started a pirate themed adventure that's going to have guest appearances by the Spell Jammer crew...

We've "finished" quite a few campaigns in about a year each, but the story *never* ends!

Good times, had by all! I wasn't part of the Spell Jammer or Runelords campaigns, but I was in the one we just finished and in the new pirate one. It's always fun to really build on what the books provide and create our own vision of the world.

The longest I've ever finished was a little over 2 years. The longest (still ongoing) is a little over 6 years. We often joke about that one never truly ending, as we only get to meet once a season or so (we all went our separate ways after high school).

Eleven sessions so far, but the last two were six months after the first nine. I work with teens, so we play when there's interest and I've been (in the background) using my original plan and plot elements.

About 8 years once a week, for about 4-5 hour sessions. We went from 1-31 or 32? It was a very long campaign with some folks shifting in and out, but a heck of an ending moment dealing with acererak and others.

Yup, the party at that point, was a succubi paladin. Who critiqued the sirens on how to snag a catch. Single handedly, somehow, (utter fluke of dice) stopped the juggernaut after everyone was put to sleep. Had to keep the other cubi's from taking away her friends with counter charm kissing. She took a few acid baths trying to find the catches to go places, even got the gelationious cube to be happy to let her go.

Part two had her flying about, and distracting the thought eater thing, while the rest of the party did what they needed to. Part three had her binding the greater tanari to save his life. He even got a nice collar out of the deal.

The rest of the party was her little gem of a greater angel. (Whom she gave the twin gun salute to the angels that didnt want to bring him back to life.) A half dragon monk, whom had lost her love in the dungeon twenty years earlier. A druidic elf whom was a bit too glory inclined, and managed to get soul sucked at the end. And a very unlucky human rogue whom managed to nearly bite it almost every chance he could by sheer bad rolls.

In the end, everyone got their happy endings, from the cubi, to the red death, (the half dragon monk), even the rogue and druid.

Black Sun Condensates. First session March 2012; last session June 2016. Over 4 years of slowly building space opera setting into multiple flavors of emerging transhuman Singularity clashing with one another, with the PCs riding herd trying to keep things peaceful (or at least survivable). That said, it was only that long because of a number of skipped weeks when one or more players couldn't be there; 126 sessions total.

Runner up chronologically, but actually had more sessions, is Electric Chocobo. 3+ years, 129 sessions including the two prologues, growing from just some bandits trying to eke out a living and save themselves from forced urbanization to taking down one crazed elemental god after another in order to restore world peace (and finally thwart a century-old alien invasion).

In about an hour I'll be starting my next 100+ session campaign, logs to be posted within a week of each session (skipping if for some reason - such as holidays - we don't have a session that week) if anyone here wants to follow along.

Tough question because it means two different things. The longest in real time was probably The Lich of Rom which long story short bastard Lich his if Phylactory in a pocket dimension or something and we had to forge a weapon that could kill him anyway. It was essentially the Colt from Supernatural but you had to tune it specifically to the being you were fighting via fetch quest of important items. It was about two years. But we played once a month if things worked out well.

The 13th Runeshade was probably on nine or ten months real time. But we were in high school. So we played 6 days a week, plus passed notes in class. So that had far far more actual hours.

That would imply campaigns can be finished. But the longest campaign I have ever had went about three years, I think? It was a long time ago. ...Also through 15 characters. It was one of my first campaigns and I did not quite get the idea of 'clerics do not valiantly sacrifice themselves/go to front lines/stand near the barbarian who throws clerics at enemies. At least until the 15th one. Who was a badass vampire-hunter who did not care as much about healing. She also killed the mage's familiar, but he would not shut up about it...

We did one of the pathfinder adventure paths, 'enhanced' by our loving GMs to be a challenge to the party by adding an infinite amount of pain. We named one of the dungeons 'the tower of incredible bullshit' because every room had some new unfair environmental effect. (in this room, the webs keep you from moving or seeing while the enemies are unaffected... in this room the enemies all regenerate even after being reduced below zero and the floor has instantly resetting fire traps... now fight some trip-focused monks on narrow beams over the pit full of poison mist and gorgons)

So, you know. It didn't go quickly. We started at level 1 and made it to level 13, which doesn't sound like a lot, but the GM was using story-reward XP so we only levelled up at key story moments which generally had a few dozen sessions in between. We were playing that game for *years*.

At the end there was a giant castle full of boss monsters and sidequests and we just sort of said 'screw this' and rushed the emperor, after turning the first miniboss to our side. ("He hates the emperor, but is sworn not to allow anyone to remove the powerful artifacts that will let you kill him from the vault." "Can *he* leave the vault? I'm pretty sure an ancient dragon with class levels will do a lot more against the emperor than some stupid artifacts." "... yes?") (it turned out we actually couldn't kill the emperor without the artifacts, but we could keep him pinned under a giant dragon's claw until we could complete the ritual to magically take the throne out from under him and then imprison him in the Pit of Demons)

I commonly took a week or two off after finishing a campaign. You have to recharge those creative juices so that the next big campaign idea happens. I often get mine when I'm lounging about watching movies.

Same here. I'd planned to take at least two weeks off after my last campaign, though as it turned out I got a lot of inspiration for plot and a lot of interest soon after floating my idea for my next campaign, so I only took one Saturday off (and the week before and after it - last campaign ended 6/11 and next campaign starts today - so technically just shy of two weeks after all).

... O-kay then. I smell a trap, Fluttershy. You might want to make sure they understood what you just told them and double check the goods before you do anything else.

Anyway, I think you've earned your time off there, Spud. It will be interesting to see what you do next. At least this time I won't have to worry about trying to slog through a huge backlog of sessions just to understand what is going on in the current one.

Eh, I suspect it's just the way they'll try to delay this time.
They'll end up having to gather more pollen or something, and while that's going on they can stay with the nice yellow horse that's giving them such good treatment.
Seabreeze is going 'What?!' because he actually wants to get home to his family, before the portal closes and he's stuck in Ponyville.